Help Support Raccoon Creek Creative Studio!

We bought our dream home in South Jersey (only 10 minutes from my current studio). This home will not only be great to live in, but there's a large garage building that we're converting into a fully functioning studio. (oh..and all *waterfront*) We have quite the large mortgage payment given that we're doing a 203k renovation loan in order to do as much as we can to get the place functional (right now it's very bare bones). But even with having $25,000 budget for renovations, it's not nearly enough to do what we thought as there's work to be done on the house itself too. We need help both physically and financially in order to get this up and running to it's fullest extent... or honestly just up to a mediocre extent at this point. Assuming everything goes as planned, we should be closing on the house mid-August which would put the studio main work to make it functional done by end of October/Early November. In the meantime, UCS will still be open an operational.

We want to give everyone an amazing place to shoot... one we only dreamt we could provide. But it's going to be a work in progress for a bit...

The Garage/Studio Space

The Garage space is an open shell ready to be turned into an ideal shooting space. It was built by the Amish in 2006 and was designed to fit 2 full size RV's on one side and it has a workshop on the other side, and a large upstairs area. We are using our renovation budget to fully insulate, drywall, and put epoxy flooring downstairs. We had the full intent to also paint everything, add a bathroom, add a model room upstairs, fully do flooring throughout and add AC & heat, but we're not even half-way there budget wise to do so. We've decided we can get by without the bathroom at first, letting people come into the house instead. Also because of the timing, we should be fine without heat or AC for a couple of months (and even maybe through the winter with large space heaters) but only for so long and it's certainly not ideal. We also can wait on painting all of the walls as that's purely cosmetic. We can just paint the areas needed in the meantime. 

Our goal for October is that there will be:
-the very large main shooting area with high ceilings
-Ability to open garage doors for large amounts of natural light (we can put up a privacy barrier from the outside)
-a rig put up for silks/lyra/aerial modeling
-a large amount of additional wall space to but backdrops up everywhere to 
-a creatively finished barn door to get that rural, country look
-a waiting room, lounge area when you first walk-in
-epoxy flooring throughout downstairs to help keep models feet clean and be easy to maintain
-Upstairs will have a natural light boudoir setup and multiple setups around the space
-Painted flooring upstairs

The Main House, Master Suite & Outdoors

The main house will be my living space but during times of having models staying with us and/or doing meetup events, I will try to have sections of the house available for shooting in. The house, airbnb/master suites, and the outdoor areas will be available at times for standard rentals dependent upon airbnb guests who have booked already. We finally will have spaces with lots of natural light and the ability to shoot outdoors. Yay!

Main Features:

  • Large living space with sliding glass doors to allow a lot of light in and good natural light shooting

  • Fireplace in main home

  • The main new master suite overlooks the water. It will become the main suite we have models stay in and also an airbnb rental. It Is a large space with a lot of natural light and it has a large jetted tub, unique glass shower. The main wall will be painted a nice blue tone and the room will have a nautical theme. This will be a space that is not always available if we have airbnb renters so take advantage of it when traveling models are in town.

  • There is a second master suite that will be available for models and airbnb rentals as well. We will also be opening the hosting option to photographer who want to book the studio as well.

  • Outdoors: There’s a boat ramp that may able to be used to have a model get in the water and (very carefully) pose close to the shore where the photographer can get good angles to have the model in the water with even the sunset behind it. It’s a dream! We will need a bit of cutting back of bushes

What I need help with:

  • Manual labor: Helping us move from studio to studio and unpack/setup, hang backdrops etc

  • Manual labor: Painting help ~ we plan to buy the paint ourselves to paint the floors upstairs and paint needed sections of walls; Sprayers might be helpful if anyone has any for quicker painting.

  • Manual labor: Landscape and tree service help

  • Extra photography equipment: We need another good backdrop stand setup so we can block off privacy areas when outside shooting and/or privacy screens that are easy to move around. Plus we will be looking to get more alien bees or digibees and pocket wizards

  • $$$ Purchase and installation of HVAC system

  • $$$ Installation of a fully functioning bathroom with toilet, sink & basic stand-up shower

  • $$$ Framing up a room upstairs for model/client privacy and wardrobe

Can you help me financially? $$$

We need investors! I’m prepared to offer a lot in exchange for any funding. A fan of my modeling and want content or prints? A photographer who wants use of the studio (either UCS or RCCS or both … with or without my assistance)? A photographer who wants to book me as a model? A photographer who wants to use my retouching services? Just want to support? I’m offering a 50% additional “credit” on whatever service you do want. For example if you donate $100, I’ll give you $150 in credit for studio time, modeling time, retouching, etc. If you’re a fan, we’ll work out privately what you want for photo sets, videos, prints, etc.

Click to Donate

Can you help us physically with some of those manual labor and/or skilled labor tasks?

Fill this out to volunteer!